Power Automate (formerly called Microsoft Flow) is the automation tool for the M365 suite of products. Like many of you, I grew accustomed to using Workflows and the SharePoint Designer tool to create and edit workflows in previous versions of SharePoint. Now with Power Automate, there are several ways to connect with other systems. I’ll cover these briefly:
- Connector: Microsoft provides many for you to choose from. A connector is used to connect to a data source, such as a SharePoint list, the Dataverse, a Google calendar, OneDrive, or a SQL server, to name but a few.
- Connection: The stored authentication details and access tokens used to connect to an external data source. Basically, a stored Connector.
- Connection Reference: A reusable reference object which acts as a proxy for a Connection. This allows you to use a single connection for multiple solutions. When you have to edit, modify, or update the Connection, all your flows will continue to work without having to be each updated.
For more on this subject, I recommend this article from the Global SharePoint Diary website.
Scott Ortlepp at SProbot has provided a step-by-step guide of an end-to-end process for Governance in an M365 environment. First, he set up a Contract Contact Type, then a Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policy in the SharePoint Admin Center, followed by setting up a Compliance rule within the policy that blocks files associated with the Contract Content Type from being shared with any external users.
Additionally, he provides the steps to add this new content type and associated documents to a managed property in the Search crawl component. It’s all quite clever and straight-forward. He uses PowerShell along the way although the same processes may very well be performed in the user interface. Good stuff here and happy to pass along.
Today I was reading this article from the SharePointEurope.com site about PDF forms. Most likely, as a SharePoint admin you’re going to want to use a SharePoint List to capture input from a form. The form will probably be either the default form created for you when you created the list, or that very form after you’ve modified it, or a form you made using a third-party product like Nintex. Sound about right?
But what if your users insist (as they sometimes do) on having a PDF form on SharePoint? What then? Do they download it, fill it out, and then upload it to a forms library? The article I referred to above discusses (ok, advertises) a third-party product that installs onto your SharePoint Online tenant or on-premises server which resolves this problem.
The PDF Editor for SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams from Muhimbi promises to deliver the following features:
- Fill PDF forms “without having to leave SharePoint”
- Edit text like in a Word doc
- Annotate content
- Redact text
- Add electronic signatures
- Add digital signatures
- And some other features that I haven’t listed here…
I have no idea how much it costs but you can get a quote by visiting this page.
Note: I do not endorse this product, I don’t get any money (or anything else from them), and I haven’t tried it. I’m just letting you know about it since it looks promising. You’re on your own. 🙂
This article from SProbot compares two different methods for blocking external access to SharePoint Online sites: PowerShell vs Sensitivity Labels.
I find the first section on the PowerShell method to be the preferred method. The caveat here is that to perform this method you must have Global Admin rights on the O365 tenant. In my case, that’s not feasible.
So the second option is interesting. I did not realize that one could apply a sensitivity label to an entire site before this. I had never noticed. But under the section “Define the scope for this label” in Microsoft Purview (formerly Compliance Center) after you have chosen to “+ Create a label” sure enough, there is an option to define the scope to “Groups & sites”. So this is helpful indeed and you don’t have to be a Global Admin to do it.
If you’re working with a modern SharePoint Online site, such as the modern Communications site, you are probably disappointed at the limited number and features of the web parts available. Notably, the Script Editor web part (SEWP) and the Content Editor web part (CEWP) are no longer available, which is most unwelcome. To fill this gap, there are several options, at present:
- The Modern Script Editor web part from Puzzlepart. Salaudeen Rajack has provided a helpful write-up here.
- Dave Schmidt’s forum answer to add a classic “Web Part Page” to your site’s Content Types.
Note: If the classic page looks too dramatically different from the rest of your modern site, use CSS to customize it. - React InjectCSS: An SPFx extension that injects CSS on every page of your modern site
- Another gem from Salaudeen, this clever solution involves using the Embed web part to call a custom HTML page you’ve created.
Note: It requires enabling custom scripting in the SharePoint Online Admin Center.
I cannot count the number of clients I’ve encountered who have treated the default document library on a SharePoint site as the *only* document library they could use. So they filled it up with folders, then sub-folders, then sub-sub-folders, etc. It makes for a difficult conversation. I usually say “let’s take ALL of the top-level folders and make them each their own document library!” And then they say “No” because they’ve gotten used to it like this. And by “this” I mean sprawled and unmanageable, generally.
So if you’ve got sites that have folder sprawl, this article from Veronique Palmer will give your users a little help figuring out how many sub-folders are beneath your top-level folders, and how many items they contain. It’s a start. And it’s helpful.
One last piece of advice: if your organization manually provisions sites for users, delete the default “Documents” document library and during the provisioning process, ask your users to think about how many document libraries they’ll probably need going forward. Get them to provide meaningful document library names. And then create them for them.
Today I found two tools from LinkTek that I want to share. First, the free one. LinkReporter is a free tool that reports on broken links throughout your IT enterprise. I suggest you run it and then decide to either fix the links manually or use a paid product to fix them for you.
The second tool is LinkFixer Advanced which runs against SharePoint on-premise, Microsoft 365, Box, OneDrive, DropBox, and regular file servers. It is an enterprise-wide application that appears to run against any of these platforms so it’s not specific to SharePoint at all.
For SharePoint-specific migrations, they offer a page which goes into more detail: LinkFixer Advanced for SharePoint. This could be the tool that saves your job or your sanity.
June 15, 2022 marked the End of Life for Internet Explorer. Now, we are redirected to Microsoft’s Edge browser. It appears that Edge does not support the SharePoint library feature “View in File Explorer” that many of us have come to rely upon. Apparently, since Edge build 93, the feature is now supported but there are two steps that must be followed. The article at the link below provides the solution.
How to Enable “View in File Explorer” in Microsoft Edge
However, Microsoft advises against using File Explorer in favor of the Sync feature. Click this link and then scroll down to the section heading “What’s the difference between Sync and View in File Explorer?” for a full explanation of this modern, recommended feature.
Fortunately for me, I’ve switched over to SharePoint Online. However, for those admins who are running SharePoint Server 2019 on-premise, the recently released May 2022 Cumulative Update (CU) may make your entire left-hand navigation disappear! Thankfully, Stefan Goßner at Microsoft has posted the issue details and the resolution on his wonderful blog.
Remember: when installing SharePoint Server patches, you’ll want to install both the language-dependent and the language-independent fixes, then run PSCONFIG.
Apr 22
8
The SharePoint Online App Bar
Recently, Microsoft has added a nifty button in the upper-left corner of SharePoint Online (part of the Microsoft 365 package) that renders the logged-in user’s recent history for Sites, Lists, and Files, as well as recommended news and global navigation. The App Bar button is just to the right of the Microsoft 365 “waffle” icon and is available throughout.
For end users: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/use-the-sharepoint-app-bar-b2ab82d5-9af7-445e-ad24-236c5a86b5f8?ui=en-us&rs=en-us&ad=us
It is interesting to note that it is not (yet?) available on Classic sites and customization is limited to the global navigation pane.
For admins: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/viva/connections/sharepoint-app-bar
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